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Many of their neighbours were, like them, speakers of West Germanic dialects, including the inland Franks and Thuringians to the south, and the coastal Frisians and Angles to the north who were among the peoples who were originally referred to as "Saxons" in the context of early raiding and settlements in Roman Britain and Gaul.
The name of this tribe, the Saxons (Latin: Saxones), was first mentioned by the Greek author Ptolemy. The name Saxons is derived from the Seax, a knife used by the tribe as a weapon. [citation needed] In the 3rd and 4th centuries, Germany was inhabited by great tribal confederations of the Alamanni, Bavarians, Thuringians, Franks, Frisii, and ...
Saxons had been raiding the eastern seaboard of Britain from here during the 3rd and 4th centuries (prompting the construction of maritime defences in eastern Britain called the Saxon Shore) and it is thought that following the collapse of the Roman defences on the Rhine in 407 pressure from population movements in the east forced the Saxons and their neighbouring tribes the Angles and the ...
The Duchy of Saxony (Low German: Hartogdom Sassen) was originally the area settled by the Saxons in the late Early Middle Ages, when they were subdued by Charlemagne during the Saxon Wars from 772 AD and incorporated into the Carolingian Empire by 804.
Saxony has a long history as a duchy, an electorate of the Holy Roman Empire (the Electorate of Saxony), and finally as a kingdom (the Kingdom of Saxony).In 1918, after Germany's defeat in World War I, its monarchy was overthrown and a republican form of government was established under the current name.
In mid-January 772, the sacking and burning of the church of Deventer by a Saxon expedition was the casus belli for the first war waged by Charlemagne against the Saxons. It began with a Frankish invasion of Saxon territory and the subjugation of the Engrians and destruction of their sacred symbol Irminsul near Paderborn in 772 or 773 at Eresburg.
The southern and east coasts were, of course, the areas settled first and in greatest numbers by the settlers and so presumably were the earliest to pass from Romano-British to Anglo-Saxon control. Once established they had the advantage of easy communication with continental territories in Europe via the North Sea or the Channel.
In 508, Cerdic and Cynric slew British king Natanleod along with five thousand of his men [11] (though the historicity of Natanleod has been disputed), [12] and Cerdic became the first king of Wessex in 519. The Saxons attacked Cerdicesford [13] in 519, intending to cross the River Avon and block a road which connected Old Sarum and Badbury ...